


guilt trip

by pipecleanerFlowers



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-01
Updated: 2013-08-01
Packaged: 2018-03-04 03:05:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2906969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pipecleanerFlowers/pseuds/pipecleanerFlowers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But this isn't about Yuma. You're different, you've changed because of something, of someone. Who is it?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	guilt trip

It's when Ryoga comes home for the billionth time extremely irritated and ruffled over something that he won't say that Rio decides to step in and figure it out herself. She asks Kaito, who shrugs and scoffs in response about how he's always like that these days. She catches Yuma after school and he smartly replies that he hasn't noticed anything different about Shark.

Except Ryoga is definitely... different. He sits and stares at his textbooks at the dinner table and she can tell he's not taking a single word in. She makes him dinner and he barely touches it and flings out excuses like "I'm not hungry" and "I'll save it for later" except it's still cling-wrapped in the fridge days later and Rio figures that she should probably just start cooking for one.

He falls asleep on the couch, at the table, in front of the TV. Rio wonders what could possibly be making him so tired and wonders and hopes that he's not falling asleep in class too, but a check on his grades says that he's still doing as well as he always has so that's good she guesses.

So when they're sitting down for dinner yet again and Ryoga finally asks where his dinner is because he's starving and he skipped lunch and he skipped breakfast and knowing him he was probably too prideful to accept a single riceball from Yuma, Rio tells him to make it himself. And he does.

As she's slurping up noodles, she watches him float around the kitchen in a daze, nearly cut himself with the knife, forget to turn the stove on, and hit himself with a cabinet door that he left open. Rio frowns.

"Okay, something's up."

"What?" he asks, snapping back to the reality in front of him and panicking because he forgot to add the noodles to the boiling water.

"Something's going on and it's taking you away from where you are, so spill," Rio demanded.

He turns to stare at her, brow furrowed and hands clenched around a box of noodles. "Nothing's wrong, I'm fine. I'm right here."

"Are you sure about that?" she asks as the sound of the frying onions starts hissing at them and Ryoga whips around only to see that half of them are burned to a crisp.

"Yuma told me that he hasn't noticed anything different, so obviously this isn't about him," Rio deduces. "But you're different, you've changed because of something, of someone. Who is it?"

Ryoga ignores her and dumps the noodles in the boiling water and slides the frying pan off the hot pad. Rio scowls.

"Answer me and I'll make your damn dinner for you already so you don't have to mope around the kitchen," she offered, but not without a sting in her voice.

Ryoga glances over for a second before nodding. "Fine, have it your way." Except Rio knows that he's just a total mess right now and probably doesn't want to embarrass himself further. She slurps up that last of her own noodles before standing up and replacing him at his spot near the stove.

"Okay, so, spill."

Ryoga pauses and thinks for a while before finally opening his mouth. It takes what feels like forever and she's already draining the noodles and stirring in the seasonings and sauce when he starts talking.

"You're well aware that Kaito is eighteen and legal, right?"

"Yeah."

"And I'm fourteen, and that puts us at a four year age gap."

Rio could sense where this is going, but only prompts him on with a "Yeah...?"

"Well, it's not like I'm not used to doing crazy, stupid, illegal things or anything, but..."

"You're dating him and it's stressing you out?"

Shark frowns. "More like... well, not dating. Uh. Hate-dating? If that makes sense."

"So you have angry makeout sessions in dark alleys?" Rio asks, and as much as it sounded ridiculous, she was trying her best to take this situation seriously.

"Yeah," Ryoga responds distractedly, and Rio knows and understands that there's more to it than that.

"Ah, alright. Okay, so what's troubling you about it?"

"He could get in trouble and it'd be my fault, and it's okay because I hate the guy, but it's not okay because... well, because," he ends intelligently.

"And you don't want to stop whatever your thing with him is?" Rio asks. "But you feel like you have to?" She scoops some of the noodles into a bowl and shoves it across the counter to him, and he kind of just stares at it before picking up his chopsticks.

It takes a full minute of chewing and swallowing, and it looks painful like he's trying to swallow guilt itself, before he goes, "Yeah."


End file.
